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Army's 'Warrior' Videogame
Is a Hit With Civilians, Too

By

Sarah McBride Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Updated June 10, 2004 11:59 p.m. ET

Bearded fighters with their heads wrapped in cloth. Arabic graffiti scrawled on walls. Military uniforms accurate down to the style of boot. Details like these lend credibility to "Full Spectrum Warrior," a hot new videogame in which players take on the role of U.S. Army squad leaders in a hostile urban-combat zone.

The reason the game is so realistic: The U.S. Army came up with the idea and spent millions of dollars and thousands of manpower hours on it.

But the Army won't see a cent of the profits. Those will go to the game's developer, Los Angeles-based Pandemic Studios, and its publisher,
THQ Inc.,
of Calabasas Hills, Calif. The Army does get a new training tool out of the project -- but Pandemic and THQ get the $40 million or so in gross revenue that analysts expect the $49.99 game to bring in this year. "Full Spectrum Warrior" has sold 250,000 copies since its release on June 1, putting it on track to be one of the top-selling games ever for
Microsoft Corp.'s
Xbox device.

Military brass weren't aiming to get into the commercial games business when they started planning "Full Spectrum Warrior" five years ago. They wanted to create a training game that worked with a game console, to tap into a medium recruits already use to relax. "Every 18-year-old in the world knows how to use a game console," says Mike Macedonia, chief scientist at the Army's Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training & Instrumentation, formerly known as Stricom. A bonus: Consoles cost less than computers, and they are easy to throw into a duffel bag and bring on assignment.

The Army has no policy against profiting from such a project, and it may benefit from future games that arise from "Warrior." But at least for the initial version, the Army decided there was benefit enough in getting a better, more-engaging training tool in exchange for licensing the rights, Mr. Macedonia says.

To get the project off the ground, the Army turned to the Institute for Creative Technology, a Hollywood-Pentagon think tank intended to bring the entertainment and military communities together for simulations and other projects. Eager to develop better interactive training, the Army set up the ICT in 1999, in affiliation with the University of Southern California, with a $45 million budget for specific projects spread out over five years. Several projects are on the boil, including an exercise where soldiers wear 3-D glasses, walk on a floor that trembles and smell scents placing them in various combat environments. Another project, Flatworld, uses movies projected on blank walls to simulate buildings and streets that soldiers will be able to run through.

When it came to "Full Spectrum Warrior," ICT suggested creating a commercial adaptation because the cost of developing a videogame these days runs into the millions of dollars. The institute brought Pandemic and THQ on board, which kept the Army's total contribution under $4 million.

Early on, the Army decided it wanted to gear the game to junior-level soldiers. "We have simulators for generals and colonels and captains and majors, but never anything specifically for the squad leader," says Mr. Macedonia. "That's the first really major leadership step in the Army." Squad leaders are usually around 20 years old, smack in the age group that gravitates to consoles.

In the game, a squad made up of two teams of soldiers maneuvers through narrow streets and alleys, complete with minarets, arched windows and tiled walls. Some enemy fighters wear cloths wound around their heads. The idea, the developers say, was to look authentic without looking too much like any specific region.

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To win over those young soldiers, ICT and its partner companies worked closely with the Army to make sure every detail of the game matched reality. Game developers made frequent trips to Fort Benning, Ga., where the Army runs its infantry school. The game, based on Army training manuals, doesn't contain any non-public information.

One test -- involving a scene where soldiers come under enemy fire, take cover and return fire -- provoked a debate among two officers. "One was saying, 'No, you return fire first, and then duck," recalls Andrew Goldman, chief executive of Pandemic. "The other was saying, 'No, you do the opposite." Each one pulled out an Army manual that backed up his interpretation. The more senior officer, who believed in ducking before firing, prevailed.

Such details might seem irrelevant to the average gamer, but to those in the Army, they take center stage. "It's all about suspension of disbelief," says James Korris, creative director at the Institute for Creative Technologies. "If you're in the military, and you see somebody [following the wrong rule or] wearing the wrong uniform, you're not going to believe it anymore."

On the flip side, the team realized some elements that work for the Army wouldn't do for the public. Players of both versions can throw smoke grenades: In reality, it would take two or three minutes for such a device to provide cover. In the commercial game it takes just seconds, accommodating the average gamer's low patience quotient.

"If a game player had to wait two to three minutes, they would throw their game controller," says Tom Stratton, a THQ spokesman. In the commercial version, screen displays tell players where they are, who they are controlling and how much ammunition they have left. "In the military version, it's really up to that person commanding their teams to pay attention," he says.

Civilians can skip an after-action review session, which soldiers must take to learn what they did wrong. "You don't learn anything by hitting reset and starting over again," says Mr. Korris.

"Full Spectrum Warrior" builds on the success of "America's Army," a free Internet game launched in 2002 and geared primarily toward recruiting soldiers. In April, the Army licensed a French company, Ubi Soft, to create a console version of the game, which now works only on personal computers. Under the deal, the Army collects a licensing fee; it will collect royalties after the game is released commercially and hits sales targets.

If "Warrior" hits its own undisclosed sales targets, the Institute for Creative Technology gets a small percentage of the profits -- which it plans to plow back into other training projects in the works.

For its part, the Army says it got more than its money's worth from "Warrior," because of the elements Pandemic added, such as the realistic machine guns. Mr. Macedonia says the Army has learned enough about artificial intelligence and the capabilities of the console to build better future training games. "Our intent from the very beginning was to build the world's best training simulations," says Mr. Macedonia. "The fact that people found it to be compelling from a commercial standpoint was an add-on."